We have extended the tag cloud metaphor to allow it to be applied to
information and software visualisation. A number of issues, such as wide
variation in tag length, have been addressed. We have developed a tool, TAGGLE,
which implements our approach. In this paper, we present our visualisation
technique and discuss the heuristic evaluation and report preliminary results
from user trials employed to evaluate the approach and TAGGLE itself.

Stereoscopic visualization creates illusions of depth through disparity
between the images shown to left and right eyes of the viewer. While the
stereoscopic visualization is widely adopted in immersive visualization systems
to improve user experience, it can also cause visual discomfort if the
stereoscopic viewing parameters are not adjusted appropriately. These
parameters are usually manually adjusted based on human factors and empirical
knowledge of the developer or even the user. However, scenes with dynamic
change in scale and configuration can lead into continuous adjustment of these
parameters while viewing. In this paper, we propose a method to adjust the
interpupillary distance adaptively and automatically according to the
configuration of the 3D scene, so that the visualized scene can maintain
sufficient stereo effect while reducing visual discomfort.

Augmented Reality (AR) on smart phones can be used to overlay virtual tags
in the real world to show points of interest that people may want to visit.
However, field tests have failed to validate the belief that AR-based tools
would outperform map-based tools for such pedestrian navigation tasks. Assuming
this is due to inaccuracies in consumer GPS tracking used in handheld AR, we
created a simulated environment that provided perfect tracking for AR and
conducted experiments based on real world navigation studies. We measured
time-on-task performance for guided traversals on both desktop and head-mounted
display systems and found that accurate tracking did validate the superior
performance of AR-based navigation tools. We also measured performance for
unguided recall traversals of previously traversed paths in order to
investigate into how navigation tools impact upon route memory.

Despite the communication of information via Email that is meant to prepare
us and make us more organised, Email is fast becoming an unmanageable source of
productive information meeting unproductive ends. The Email environment, with
its suite of time and task management aids, is proving too fragmentary. Effort
expended in categorising and organising incoming information is not rewarded
with intelligent forewarning and awareness-generation of deadlines and
obligations. With preparatory methods (information organisation behaviour)
declining in favour of opportunistic methods that do not facilitate recall or
prioritisation, attempts to re-invigorate preparatory methods are required to
encourage the continued practice of organisation in Email. To understand what
is required of preparatory methods to garner interest from Email users, we
conducted a user interface study that targeted the management and
awareness-generation aspects of temporal (time-related) information in the
Email environment. Our results indicate that users' desire to organise
information is not extinguished, but a careful emphasis on assistance is
necessary to once again make these preparatory methods an attractive
proposition.

We have developed a hybrid tracking algorithm for mobile outdoor augmented
reality (AR) applications. Our approach combines inertial sensors and camera
video to improve global bearing calculations. Prior research in this area has
focused on gravity aware feature descriptors, but we expand this to efficient
full-frame vertical edge detection. We discuss our implementation and evaluate
it's performance on an iPhone 5, which reveals that our approach is over 100
times faster than existing feature alignment algorithms and can improve
tracking with only 2-4ms of additional processing per frame on current
generation mobile phones.

Stereoscopic display technologies are becoming increasingly commonplace in
cinemas, homes and offices. It appears that this form of presentation, also
referred to as 3D, is more and more supplementing and substituting monoscopic
(2D) forms. However, there is only little evidence for the actual usefulness of
stereo presentations.
We are investigating users' preferences for stereoscopic PowerPoint-style
slide presentations, in particular which presentation elements are perceived as
useful.
In an empirical within-subject study with 20 participants comparing
monoscopic with stereoscopic slide presentations we found early evidence that
there is only little difference in the users' preferences, that text and images
are preferred to be watched monoscopically and that graphs, diagrams and 3D
models might be preferred in stereo, but may confuse the viewers.

We investigate the effect that visual occlusion plays on users' perception
in a prototypical augmented reality post-stroke therapy system. We implemented
a reach-based therapeutic exercise using the Microsoft Kinect to enable depth
sensing and correct visual occlusion of the upper-limb. Thirty participants
evaluated the exercise with three different visual occlusion modes: the correct
visual occlusion, a virtual-always-occludes -- to date the most commonly used
mode in augmented reality -- and a mode with semi-transparent virtual objects.
The analysis of their reported experience showed that correct occlusion was the
most preferred mode for performing the reaching exercise, providing a more
tangible and realistic interactive experience.

This paper describes the Massive Ontology Interface (MOI), a web portal
which facilitates interaction with a large ontology (over 200,000 concepts and
1.6M assertions) that is built automatically using the OpenCyc ontology as a
backbone. The aim of the interface is to simplify interaction with the massive
amounts of information and guide the user towards understanding the ontology's
data. Using either a text or graph-based representation, users can discuss and
edit the ontology. Social elements utilizing gamification techniques are
included to encourage users to create and collaborate on stored knowledge as
part of a web community.
An evaluation by 30 users comparing MOI with OpenCyc's original interface
showed significant improvements in user understanding of the ontology, although
full testing of the interface's social elements lies in the future.

Designing a NUI Workstation for Courier Dispatcher Command and Control Task
Management

Natural User Interface technology greatly changes the way we interact with
computer systems, but does it perform as well as their traditional counterparts
under pressure? By comparing a selection of user interface devices that provide
a range of natural interaction systems, we explore how well the interface
devices will perform in a command and control environment such as for a courier
dispatcher. A Fitts' pointing experiment was used to make the comparisons and
we found that a Multi-touch system performed the best in pointing and selection
tasks, followed by mouse, Track-pad and lastly the Leap Motion hand tracking
and gesture controller. It was noted that in order for any of the devices to
operate at their optimum, then the graphical user interface and the hardware
interface needs to be tightly bound together in order to optimize user task
performance.

Supporting the Reader in the Wild: Identifying Design Features for a
Literary Tourism Application

This paper explores the potential features and functionality of software to
support 'literary tourism' -- a type of cultural tourism that focuses on
real-world settings associated with fictional works and the authors' lives. We
explore the research literature on literary tourism to create a set of five
literary tourist personas, and to tease out potential design and functionality
for applications to support these different categories of literary tourists. We
then analyze a set of current websites and applications aimed at the literary
tourist against the personas, as a test of the usefulness of the categories in
identifying potential gaps in literary tourism support.

In this paper, we describe a new interaction approach for intuitive 3D
object handling in Augmented Reality (AR). Our method transforms the AR
tracking pattern into a point-based representation and then uses this to
perform object interaction such as translate, rotate, and clone. This is based
on a robust real-time computer vision algorithm that constructs a 6DOF camera
pose relative to a handheld paddle used for input. Using a point-by-point
calculation of the camera pose relative to the paddle we can overlay 3D
graphics on top of the paddle or a ground plane. This allows the user to
inspect virtual objects from different viewing angles in the AR interface and
perform interactions with the objects. In this paper, we first review related
work and then briefly describe our system architecture and tracking method. We
evaluate our approach with regard to speed and accuracy, and compare it to
existing marker-based AR systems. Finally, we demonstrate the robustness and
usefulness of our approach in an example AR application.

Visualization of energy consumption patterns is expected to enforce
ecologically responsible behavior. Visualization performs a vital role by
assisting residential end-users to understand and manage their energy
consumption in a sustainable manner. The main objective of visualizing energy
consumption is to inculcate awareness among residents and to encourage energy
conserving behavior. A robust design is essential to achieving an effective
visualization. This article discusses the preliminary research work on
identifying the design requirements for visualization followed by the future
direction in this area of research.